atherine-Anne Hubback, née Austen, was the eighth child and fourth daughter
of (Sir) Francis Austen (1774-1865), one of Jane Austen’s brothers, a
successful naval officer who became Admiral of the Fleet and G.C.B. His first
wife, Mary Gibson, bore him eleven children. Five years after her death in 1823,
he married Martha Lloyd, who had long lived with old Mrs Austen and her unmarried
eldest daughter. Born in 1818, Catherine never knew her Aunt Jane. However,
Cassandra, Jane Austen’s elder sister, was a frequent visitor, introducing
Frank’s children to the works of their Aunt Jane, to the history of her
life, and also to her unpublished writings. In Jane Austen; her Life
and Letters, a Family Record, first published in 1913, William Austen-Leigh
and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh have confirmed that Cassandra not only read
Jane Austen’s novels aloud to Frank’s daughters Cassy-Eliza, Catherine-Anne
and Fanny-Sophia Austen, who were still at home at the time of her visits, but
that she also took with her the untitled manuscripts of what have come to be
known as The Watsons and Sanditon (242). Catherine
apparently made copies for herself, one of which she was later to use in order
to write the first completed continuation of Jane Austen’s novels, The
Younger Sister, published in 1850.
In 1842 Catherine married the barrister John Hubback. They had three children, but in 1847 her husband suffered a mental breakdown and after three years of repeatedly disappointed hopes of his recovery he was committed to an asylum, and Catherine consequently returned to her parents’ house. In order to support herself and her three boys, she started writing fiction. Following her second son, who had left England to seek his fortune in California, she emigrated to America in 1870. Her letters from Oakland to her family are held in the Bodleian Library and have been the subject of recent research. Catherine Hubback died in 1877.
Related Materials:
- Works and Literary Significance
- Mrs Hubback's The Younger Sister: The Victorian Austen and the Phenomenon of the Austen Sequel
- "These were the days...": Victorian Themes in Hubback's Continuation of Jane Austen's The Watsons
- Nostalgia and Mobility in Austen and the "Austen Sequel"
- Further Reading
References
Austen-Leigh, William and Richard Arthur, Jane Austen; her Life and Letters, a Family Record [1913], revised and enlarged by Deirdre Le Faye. London: The British Library, 1989.
Last modified 3 December 2002